One thing that I had heard of but never seen was the "secret" swimming hole in Yellowstone NP. It was said to be along the Firehole Canyon Drive, a little one-way dirt road that follows along the Firehole River...
It's a small road and there weren't many people back in there. Finding the swimming place was easy, now that we know where it is we will have to come back in the summertime for a swim. There's always something to come back for ;)...
The next place we stopped was one of our favorites and something the kids look forward to seeing each time we are in the park...the area with the Fountain Paint Pots. They just love all that boiling, bubbling mud for some reason :). Instead of going to the mud pots first, we went the other way on the trail and saved the mud for last...
This one was SOOO stinky! Seriously, it smelled terrible. Being the good mom that I am, I let my kids go frolic through the stink cloud while I stayed back "to take their picture", hehehe ;)...
Finally, time to see the mud pots...
They did not disappoint...lots of bubbliness...
...and the last thing before getting back to the parking area was this beauty...
Amazing, isn't it :)?
We had another new to us place to go next, Firehole Lake Drive. This is a small loop road that, as far as we could tell, not very many people take the time to go down...which makes it all the better :).
Our first stop, Firehole Spring, was an interesting one. The last really steamy feature we stood beside smelled terrible (sulfur)...this one smelled just like boiling pasta! The kids thought that was just awesome :)...
After basking in the macaroni air, we continued on the Drive and came to a terraced area...
We were just starting to walk the trail when we noticed a geyser going off in the distance. A pretty tall geyser!...
We hurried back to the car and drove down there...and it stopped...
We waited for a while, watching and hoping that it was just pausing for a second and not really done...
...but no, it was done. The geyser we were watching is called Great Fountain Geyser and it is somewhat predictable (within a 2+/- hour frame). It only goes off twice per day, so given all the facts, we were tickled just to have caught a glimpse of it from a distance.
The last stop for us on the Drive was Firehole Lake. I could have just sat and watched it for a long time...
...the steam rising off the water, the sun shining, it was all so pretty...
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